Information Delivery

An interesting thing happened yesterday; I got a friend request from my grandmother, who is fairly sick and in the hospital. After a bit of investigation, I found out that my aunt, who is an avid Facebook user, created the account as a way to update family members on her status. It certainly is an interesting interpretation of the "status update" and one I had never really considered.

On my personal blog, I'd previously written about the virtues of Facebook as I see them. As part of that post, I wrote about the benefits of pushing information en masse to a particular audience and how our lives could be enriched by it. I'm not naive enough to think people actually need it, but in a world where extended familes are separated by socioeconomic status and state lines, it certainly helps bridge the communication gap. Some may argue that a family member's health is worthy of a phone call, but as part of a family that numbers in the dozens I can't say I'd want to take part in that logistical nightmare. E-mail is probably the only truly practical way to share the same information with a large number of people, but I really don't understand how that's any different than a private Fb update.

Unfortunately, the account was deleted this morning because some objected to the methodology. I guess I can understand their perspective... actually, no I can't. I suppose I can concede that it's okay to not let Facebook take such a pivotal role in sharing this information, but I think those attitudes are outdated and are dying off as fast as the Baby Boomers are. I submit this as evidence that while I live a lot of my life and consume most of my information on the internet, we as a society are not really ready to fully embrace it. I think the day the newspaper dies is the day we can officially say we're there.